Fate Of Health IT Is Not Tied To One Political Party

Count me among those who don't believe that the health IT world would have come crashing to a halt had Mitt Romney won last week's presidential election. Although the former Massachusetts governor did promise to dismantle healthcare reform had he been elected, he made no such statements about the HITECH Act that mandates hospitals to use electronic health records in a meaningful way.

Yes, several House and Senate Republicans called for a freeze to Meaningful Use incentive payments only a month before the election, citing a lack of universal interoperable standards. While I've said before that such standards already exist, the House members, in particular, also made mention in their letter to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of Center for Public Integrity data that determined that EHRs could lead to physician upcoding; there must be something to that data if Sebelius (in conjunction with the Office of Civil Rights), National Health IT Coordinator Farzad Mostashari and the Office of Inspector General all, too, now are looking into the matter...